HOLY

Easter is the cornerstone of our faith tradition — a day when we celebrate the resurrection of something that seemed without hope.

Not only without hope, but dead, bludgeoned, buried.

Not only dead, but soaked in shame and sorrow and sarcasm.

It can be hard to remember that before the death, there was hope. Hope of a new thing, a better way.

This hope was incubated by a Middle Eastern carpenter’s apprentice who was born to an unmarried teenage girl.

He grew up seeking refuge from a neighboring country, displaced as his safety was threatened by the corrupt powers of the time.

He gathered a diverse group of friends—across the spectrum of occupation, gender, social class, education and religious training.

He lived simply: feeding people, healing people, teaching through story and asking questions without certain answers.

He spoke of heaven on earth, of wild mercy, of nonviolence. He condemned systems that exploited the vulnerable, especially in the name of religion.

He stood between the accused and the accusers. He sat at the tables that others scoffed at, avoided.

He didn’t oblige the systems, whether of religious empires or political ones.

When they arrested him for exactly that, one of his friends attacked the soldier who held him.

Instead of celebrating this show of strength, he gently healed the man who had been harmed.

When his followers and countrymen were given the chance to free him and prove his innocence, they chose a to free a violent political insurrectionist instead.

When he neared the end of his state sanctioned execution, he asked that his killers and those demanding his death be forgiven—his arms spread wide, in his life and in his last breath.

Mercy, mercy, mercy.

For the stranger, the sinner, the superior.

Mercy.

His followers spent that first Easter in a state of doubt, disbelief, debilitating despondence.

How could this have happened? Did they get it all wrong? Were they fooled?

I have to imagine they wondered why they hadn’t done more, what they could have done differently. I have to imagine they felt lonely, crazy, ashamed.

I am certain they were gutted with grief.

The empire and exploitative religious system had won—again.

Where do we even go from here?

What good is faith if no one can see it, if others can claim it and contradict it, if it isn’t making a single thing better?

On that wild and weary day he appeared to his friend, Mary, making a woman the first witness to this story that has lasted centuries.

He found the rest of them huddled in a locked, dank room.

He didn’t shame them for hiding, for being heartbroken—he found them where they were.

He allowed them to demand proof, to ask questions, to wonder and to weep.

Maybe, like me, you are spending this Holy Week wondering how this story could have possibly produced the current predatory system of American Christianity

As we sanction bombs that land on a hospital where a child suffocates trying to escape

As we remove funding for low-income schools and students with disabilities

As we gloat and gut systems of global support

As we erase international aid for the most innocent among us

As we eliminate money for medical research and disease prevention 

As we manipulate the markets and the rich get richer

As we taunt and traumatize those who question or disagree

As we are expected to stay quiet and good and decent

As we demand loyalty rather than integrity

As we eradicate due process

As we clap for cruelty

My God, it is wild and weary here, too.

I don’t have many answers and the questions haunt, but I do know this:

His love will find you, even in spaces that feel dank and dark. 

He will not diminish your doubts or demand your blind loyalty. 

He will sit with you, he will pour a glass of wine, tear a steaming piece of bread and he will show you a new thing, a better way.

Mercy.